


Sometimes he remembered

by sometimesivegotanidea



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 14:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sometimesivegotanidea/pseuds/sometimesivegotanidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he remembered. Sometimes he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes he remembered

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed.  
> English is not my first language so please feel free to correct me!

The room he lived in was small but cosy. The bed was on the left side. On a small table beside it stood an alarm clock and the black and white picture of a blond very beautiful woman. A small round table with two chairs stood on the right. Apples, a few books and bits and pieces from newspapers sorted by topic lay on the table. Some newspaper bits hang from the wall. At the window was an old battered but comfortable armchair facing a new white chest of drawers on which a running television showing some news program stood.

An old man sat on the bed reading a newspaper. He was very old, somewhere in his mid-eighties. The man was quite small, smaller than most of the nurses. One could say that he had shrunk more than average, but then he never had been tall to begin with.  
At the moment he was collecting information on a political topic that had caught his eyes on the telly this morning and so he had asked for several newspapers. He thanked the young guy getting them for him calling him Isaac. “Isaac” just smiled and said that his daughter would come in the afternoon. He was wondering why Bel would send the little girl to come on her own.

He shared a table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a few other very charming people: Two very sweet ladies who were always debating television shows and another elderly man who had a glass eye and was missing a leg. He swore these were battle wounds from the Second World War, but he was only born in 1930 so it was very unlikely - unless he had fought for Nazi Germany. Nothing he or anybody else here seemed to care about. After all only two people on the entire floor still knew it was 2012 and not the 90s.  
In the afternoon the announced and by then forgotten visit arrived. It was a woman in her 50s with blond slightly greying hair which was falling down her face in waves. She wore a nice business costume and heels. The woman was accompanied by a small girl, according to him, actually she was about 20. 

On a normal day he called the woman Bel and asked how the show was running. The girl was Ruth, his daughter. He still remembered that they had named her after his childhood friend who had died so cruelly. These were the days Bel started to cry the moment she was about to leave the room.  
On a better day he knew that the woman wasn’t Bel but Ruth. He had no idea who the girl was, but since she had brown hair and was petite he called her Sissy: Just like he called the guy who brought the papers Isaac and the energetic and sarcastic but otherwise friendly nurse Lix. Sissy sniffled whenever he called her that and said she was called Louise. The others just seemed indifferent.

On a really good day he knew Ruth and he even remembered that the girl was called Louise. On exceptionally rare occasions he even remembered the story behind Louise’s name. It was the name Marnie and Hector – he always remembered them – had wanted to give their child, but then Marnie had died in childbed due to complications along with the child and Hector had drunk a bottle of single malt and gotten into a car which was found in the Thames the next day. It was the end of the Hour, the end of an era. But he didn’t remember that. He was only wondering why no decent television program tackled the stories of corruption and other political disasters anymore. He still turned on the telly at 7pm once a week only to find some dumb sit-com running in that time slot. He hated television nowadays.

He still wrote articles, but they didn’t make much sense since he could name neither year nor current members of parliament anymore. He read them to the woman in the picture wondering whether she would have liked them, whether they were witty enough and had enough potential to lead the show.   
He still wore a suit every day. Something he despised in younger years but he learned quickly that people took you far more serious that way. The top button was undone. Some things never changed.

Sometimes he knew that the woman in the picture only existed on photographs anymore, sometimes he thought she came to visit. In the black and white picture she wore a dress that he remembered was petrol coloured along with her favourite brooch. Her blond hair was done in a chignon. Lix had made the photograph back in 1958 shortly before the end of the Hour. He was at hospital that time. 

Not less than 15 pictures of the woman were spread around the room. A wedding picture – her in a wedding dress that looked like the one Grace Kelly wore, pictures with little Ruth, holidays in France, a trip to New York, their 25th wedding anniversary and many more. The most current picture showed them both, he didn’t remember when it was taken anymore and it made him sad, because he knew that in the time between when this picture was taken and today she must have died. But his memory was foggy and so he thought about better times. Back then when they still didn’t realize their feelings for each other and he had married someone else.

That evening Freddie Lyon sat in his armchair switched the telly to BBC news, held the picture of Bel Lyon against his chest and smiled.

When “Isaac” wanted to fetch him for dinner Freddie had already fallen asleep forever, a light smile upon his face. 

They finally would meet again after fifteen years.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on my dearly beloved grandma who died a year ago at the respectable age of nearly 86!  
> I tried to find out Freddies age and realised that he was only about 2 years younger than her.
> 
> So some elements are taken from her life. She still recognised us all!
> 
> Hope you liked it!


End file.
